From Max Lucado’s book “Just Like Jesus.”
The truth, we learn early, is not fun. We don’t like the truth. Not only do we not like the truth, we don’t trust the truth. If we are brutally honest (which is advisable in a discussion on honesty), we’d have to admit that the truth seems inadequate to do what we need done.
We want our bosses to like us, so we flatter. We call it ‘polishing the apple’. God calls it a lie. We want people to admire us so we exaggerate. We call it stretching the truth. God calls it a lie. We want people to respect us, so we live in houses we can’t afford and charge bills we can’t pay. We call it the American way. God calls it a lie.
If We Don’t Tell the Truth. . . Ananias and Sapphira represent just how much we humans do not trust the truth. They sold a piece of property and gave half the money to the church. They lied to Peter and the apostles claiming that the land sold for the amount they gave. Their sin was not in holding back some of the money for themselves; it was in misrepresenting the truth. Their deceit resulted in their deaths. Luke writes: “The whole church and all the others who heard about these things were filled with fear” (Acts 5:11).
More than once I’ve heard people refer to this story with a nervous chuckle and say, “I’m glad God doesn’t still strike people dead for lying.” I’m not so sure he doesn’t. It seems to me that the wages of sin are death. Not death of the body perhaps, but death of:
- a marriage—-Falsehoods are termites in the trunk of the family tree.
- a conscience—The tragedy of a second lie is that it is always easier to tell than the first.
- a career—Just ask the student who got booted out for cheating or the employee that got fired for embezzlement if the lie wasn’t fatal.
- faith—The language and the language of falsehoods have two different vocabularies. Those fluent in the language of falsehoods find terms like confession and repentance hard to pronounce.
We could also list the deaths of intimacy, trust, peace, credibility, and self-respect. But perhaps the most tragic death that occurs from deceit is our witness. The court won’t listen to the testimony of a perjured witness. Neither will the world. Do we think our coworkers will believe our words about Christ when they can’t believe our words about how we handled our expense account? Even more significantly, do we think God will use us as a witness if we won’t tell the truth?
Every high school football team has a player whose assignment is to carry the play from the coach to the huddle. What if the player doesn’t tell the truth? What if the coach calls for a pass but the courier says the coach called for a run? One thing is certain: the coach won’t call on that player very long. God says if we are faithful with small things, he’ll trust us with the greater things (Matt 25:21) Can he trust you with the small things? ~Max Lucado, Just Like Jesus (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1998) 108-110
